PB ‘Empowered’ Women Learning from Women in Keiskammahoek, Ivory Park, and Mgababa 1 ‘Empowered’ Women Learning from Women in Keiskammahoek, Ivory Park, and Mgababa Andrew Bennie and Michelle Williams 2 ‘Empowered’ Women ‘Empowered’ Women: Learning from Women in Keiskammahoek, Ivory Park, and Mgababa www.nibr.no www.copac.org.za www.wits.ac.za http://www.nibrinternational.no/selfhelp_or_social_transformation/http://www.nibrinternational.no/ self-help_or_social_transformation/ 2 ‘Empowered’ Women Learning from Women in Keiskammahoek, Ivory Park, and Mgababa 1 Acknowledgements We would like to thank the women who appear in this guide and who gave their time to tell us their stories. We would also like to thank them for allowing us to publish their stories so that others could learn from them. The production of this book has been part of a broader research project on comparing the role of women in transformation and development in Kerala, India and in South Africa. We would therefore also like to thank all the women that have participated in this research project. We would also like to thank all of the researchers who have been a part of this research project and who undertook the work of interviewing and transcribing: Yolisa Nyoka, Ursula Skomolo, Tongai Maodzwa, Asanda Benya, and Sindiswa Azamam Nedoboni. The research team were all postgraduate students while working on the research and it has been a pleasure working with such a wonderful group of dedicated and enthusiastic students. Thanks to all of them! Lastly, we would like to thank the Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research (NIBR) and the Norwegian Research Council for funding the research and the production of this booklet. We would also like to thank our colleagues at NIBR, Berit Aasen and Guro Aandahl, for their support and collaboration in the broader research project. We also thank the Sociology Department at the University of the Witwatersrand. Photographs by Andrew Bennie, Yolisa Nyoka, Ursula Skomolo 2 ‘Empowered’ Women Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................1 The Women of Keiskammahoek Introducing Keiskammahoek ........................................................................................................... 7 Lumka Maso .............................................................................................................................. 10 Ntombulundi Zitha .................................................................................................................... 13 Thabisa Mhlahlo ........................................................................................................................ 17 Thobeka Finca ........................................................................................................................... 20 Happines Ngcupe ....................................................................................................................... 23 Thobeka Nciza ........................................................................................................................... 25 The Women of Ivory Park Introducing Ivory Park ................................................................................................................... 27 Jane Nkosi .................................................................................................................................. 31 Virginia Ngobeni ....................................................................................................................... 35 Nkwe Semenya .......................................................................................................................... 37 Sarah March ............................................................................................................................... 39 Nelly Mphahlele ........................................................................................................................ 41 Dolly Mdamane ......................................................................................................................... 43 Maria Sebhotoma ...................................................................................................................... 45 Constance Ngobeni .................................................................................................................... 48 Flora Shawu .............................................................................................................................. 51 The Women of Mgababa Introducing Mgababa ..................................................................................................................... 54 Mama Nkohla ............................................................................................................................ 56 Nophelelo Mthwalo ................................................................................................................... 59 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 61 Poem: ‘Still I Rise’ ........................................................................................................................ 61 Information Boxes: Thinking about power .................................................................................................................... 4 Poem about the power of women ................................................................................................... 6 What is ‘food sovereignty’? ......................................................................................................... 16 Understanding the ward system in South Africa .......................................................................... 27 The Role of Women in Addressing Hunger .................................................................................47 2 ‘Empowered’ Women Learning from Women in Keiskammahoek, Ivory Park, and Mgababa 3 Introduction Women face many challenges in South Africa. The country has one of the highest rates of rape and domestic violence in the world, and women suffer from the structural violence of poverty—women are the largest category of people living in poverty—and have multiple burdens placed on them in their daily lives. The crises of poverty and violence impacts women particularly hard—women are said to be the ‘shock absorbers’ of poverty and suffering in the household. It is women who have to ensure that the family has food on the table and children and the elderly are looked after despite the lack of income and employment. And it is women who often suffer from domestic violence. These facts are often cited in news reports and therefore are well-known. What is less known, however, is that despite these enormous challenges, women continue to perform extraordinary acts in their everyday lives and in the process both access and create forms of individual and collective power. Women are not only victims, but many of them form the backbone of communities and are acting to change their communities in positive ways. It is in these everyday acts of kindness, courage, and perseverance that we see the strength of women coming to the fore. In this booklet we showcase seventeen women from three different communities all of whom are actively trying to improve their lives and the lives of people in their communities in various ways. In the routines of daily life, these women are challenging the slow violence of poverty by working together with others. In the profiles of the women’s lives that we highlight here, we see different forms of power that act upon women, and that women invoke and use: structural power, movement power, symbolic power, and direct power. While power has very real effects, it is constituted through social relations and diffused throughout society, and therefore can also be changed and reconstituted. Understanding the different forms of power, then, is vital for transforming our communities. This guide hopes to offer tools with which women can further understand the ways in which they can build power for social transformation. The biographies profiled here show women in their struggles to become agentic actors in their local spaces. They show the different ways in which and degrees to which women are empowered and the deeply intertwined nature of individual empowerment and larger social goals. The profiles focus on individual histories, goals and aspirations as well as their commitments to social change. We chose the women based on their effective agency in which their activities and empowerment have consequences for both their own lives and their communities. The women showcased here see their own personal development, women’s emancipation, and social transformation integrally interconnected. The basis for this volume is that many women in South Africa, despite the tough conditions that they face, are working to build new forms of production, engaging in political structures, and helping their communities to deal with the myriad problems they face. These efforts are integral to building an alternative society, based on humanist values, economic solidarity, and democratic participation in the economy and polity. Building a new solidarity society is vital to overcoming the crises that our people face, of unemployment, poverty, hunger, inequality, crime, violence (including sexual and gender violence), the closing down